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Mysterious Space

Originally made for 7DRL 2014, Mysterious Space is a side-scrolling space shooter.

Not a very Rogue-like base, but many Rogue-like trappings are present, including "potions", permadeath, and a quest to delve into a procedurally-generated world to find an artifact, and return with it alive!

I've continued to work on the game long after the 7DRL challenge ended, adding more and crazier equipment, more enemies, more interesting levels, a different way of exploring space, unlockable ships... and more!

The Ruins of

In The Ruins of, you play as an adventuring archaeologist in a slightly-anachronistic 1908, exploring ruins, temples, caves, and other sites around the world, excavating artifacts, and defeating mythological creatures.

The Excavations

Travel the world exploring the ruins left behind by ancient cultures, from Greek temples to Khmer palaces to Mayan burial sites (and many others besides).

Each hosts its own look and feel, but more importantly, its own history and mythology.

The Treasures

Because The Ruins of uses a dictionary of adjectives, nouns, and "titles" to generate items on the fly, there are over a million unique items in the game. Some words are available only in certain regions: "Thor's" in Scandinavia, "The Phoenix's" in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, "of the Elephant" in India...

For things like Vases, Cups, and Bowls, these names are mostly decorational, but for equipment, every word implies specific properties, meaning there are hundreds of thousands of possible ways to arm yourself.

Other kinds of treasurse you might find:

Dinosaur (and other extinct animal) bones.

Alien artifacts.

Eggs. Hatch them to receive a pet!

The Monsters

Of course, it won't be as easy as just strolling in and taking all the treasure. Traps and mythological monsters stand in your way.

Just like treasures, monsters are built from a dictionary of words, each bundled with specific meaning for combat. There are tens of thousands of monsters possible, and as you explore deeper, the most dangerous will present themselves. You may even come face to face with legendary figures from mythology.

Reincarnation

As you adventure, you'll acquire Knowledges (of which there are over 100). Many you will gain by leveling up, but a couple you'll start with, a few will be offered by the Museum as gratitude for your services, and yet others will be learned in stranger ways.

You won't be able to learn them all in an entire life time, but that's OK: you'll be playing out many lifetimes.

Eventuallly you'll have the option of reincarnating. Every time you do, you get to choose a single Knowledge to keep as a "Transcendental Knowledge" that will stay with you for eternity.

The exact details of how you reincarnate I will leave to you to discover.

The Other

Made in two days, The Other provides a quick look at the conflict between existentialism and modern psychology; inspired by books such as You Are Not So Smart, Outliers, and The Drunkard's Walk.

Existentialism says that we are born as clean slates in a world that has no meaning, and that while society, culture, and religion may often provide meanings, pressuring us to accept them, we can - and should - rise above these, make our own meanings, and pursue them passionately.

But do we give ourselves too much credit? Are humans capable - or even worthy - of determining their own fate?

REPEAT

Your goal is to escape the level, but whenever anything changes in the level - your position included - it resets to its original state after a short time. You must REPEAT the level over and over again, gaining new powers from a mysterious entity as you do so, until you finally have the tools necessary to escape.

Mage Character Sheet Generator

Critter World

An artificial life program. The focus is on the neural networks of the critters, whose neural networks evolve through random mutations and natural selection. (Their bodies evolve as well, but there are very few parameters to their body: color, and size.) Eventually, critters evolve that are capable of seeking out food, eating it, and reproducing (instead of wandering around and dying without children).

The critters reproduce asexually (at a high cost of energy), and like moving and eating, choose to reproduce depending on their neural network.

The neural networks are comprised of input neurons (which sense various properties of the world around them), output neurons (which control how the critter moves), and inbetween/internal neurons. Which are present, in what quantities, and how they're connected, is entirely up to mutation and natural selection.

How a neuron fires depends on its type. For example, an input neuron for the energy level of the current critters' cell fires with strength proportional to the amount of energy on the tile.

The "internal" neurons fire depending on their input from other neurons, passing their signal to another internal neuron, or perhaps an output neuron.

The firing of output neurons is used as a sort of "vote" for what the critter should do on a given step. For example, if both a "move north" and "move south" neuron fire at the same time, they probably do so at different strengths. The highest strength wins. It is possible for a critter to have any number of any of these output neurons - the outputs of neurons giving the same commands are totalled.

I coded several other features that the critters don't seem to make use of, presumably because they are not advantageous in the universe I created for them:

The ability to attack other critters, causing them to bleed edible energy

The ability to change the ground's color (when a critter views a tile, it sees only its color, which is the average of the tile's color, and the color of the critter on that tile, if any)

The ability to change the ground's height (it is a 2.5D world)

The program is very visual, showing the critters, energy on each tile, color and height of the tiles, etc; it includes a help screen (press 'h'), population graphs, and the ability to view critters' neural networks (although this display is admittedly not very useful).